Broomsticks, Wands, and Draco Malfoy
By stealacandy
Short Summary: In canon HP, Harry nearly always loses those battle of wits Draco Malfoy engages with him. Which is funny, because Draco always rubbed off on me as one stupid son-of-a-female-canine. The only explanation to it is Harry is even a stupider son-of-a-female-canine. Not in this story. Here Harry is SMART!
Long Summary: In canon Harry Potter, Harry nearly always loses those battle of wits Draco Malfoy engages with him. Which is funny, because Draco always rubbed off on me as one stupid son-of-a-female-canine. The only explanation to it is Harry is even a stupider son-of-a-female-canine. Dumb and Dumber. I can already see Harry Potter plated by Jim Carrey. Probably pull it off better than Daniel Redcliff anyway.
My (low) opinion of the (low) quality of the Harry Potter movies aside, Harry being rather stupid is actually supported by a lot of the actions he takes, and those actions he doesn't take, in canon, and not only by the words coming out of his imaginary mouth. And it's sad JKR failed to utilise the comic relief that could have been derived from a stupid protagonist. Nevertheless, she tried writing a serious children story, not a humour fic or a parody. I guess that just goes to show every writer writes a bit of himself into his stories, then…
Consequently, by writing a serious story, JKR gavef the tone to the main body of fan--fiction in the fandom she created. Thus, even when writers in the humour scene write Harry Potter, they rarely utilise the fact that he's stupid and naïve and rarely thinks strait. There are some examples otherwise, though. Rorscharch's Blot's acclaimed "Make a Wish" - at least at the beginning - puts that fact to some good use, but even that story fails to realise the potential it has for comic relief.
I myself, on the other hand, tend to write Intelligent! Harry, although on a few occasions I wrote Oblivious! Harry (Kuru, Little Prick/His Equal, Electrifying Epiphany) with things (mostly) going his way (mostly) without him doing anything, the universe just adjusting itself that way. Sadly, it couldn't be further away from canon than have things go Harry's way, with or without his guiding hand. But I do like a happy ending, so my Harry is generally smart. Like I said, I guess what they say is tue: authors do end to write a bit of themselves into their stories.
Yes, I'm saying I'm intelligent, if you haven't figured it out. I'm also very humble.
Well, to sum it up, I tend to write a Harry Potter who is intelligent, crafty, a bit Machiavellian even, and a bit of a smart-ass. And recently, a Harry who can talk you around anything.
Unfortunately, I forgot to send Draco Malfoy the missive, so he's still trying his old tricks, you know the saying about teaching an old dog new tricks. Which just goes to prove he really is a stupid son-of-a-female-canine. (sorry bout that, it's the rating system, you know.)
So Malfoy still tries to parry words with Harry, and is outwitted every time. Very.
Of course, just outwitting Malfoy isn't much fun - nor is it much of a challenge, virtually anyone (save, apparently, canon Harry,) could do it. No sir, in this story, Malfoy gets trenched, humiliated, made a fool out, in public, his manliness comes to question, under close scrutiny, under the magnifying glass if you wish, and doesn't stand up to the challenge. He always comes short. And that's just the little problem. The bigger one, is half the time he doesn't even know he lost the battle.
In this story, yes, Draco Malfoy is a little naïve. Harry Potter is anything but.
A/N: This story is very AU…
Disclaimer: If the summary hasn't made it clear I am not miss Rowling, I don't know what will.
Not being her, or a share-holder of either Warner-Bros. or Bloomsbury (to the extent of my knowledge, never know what those goblins at the bank do with my money really though,) I don't own any rights to anything official Harry Potter. The goblins aren't any happier about that fact than I am.
Broomsticks, Wands, and Draco Malfoy
By stealacandy
Prologue, Part I :
The Wand Chooses The Wizard
Harry sat at Madam Malkin's, waiting for his measuring to end, and listened to the blond kid's drivel.
"…And my mother is looking at wands and yada yada" it went on. And it went on. And on. And so on.
Harry didn't know much about what the boy was talking about, so he kept his mouth shot. But, eventually, the blond kid seemed to shut up and await his reply.
"Really," he said faintly.
Soon Madam Malkin was all done with him and he was - thankfully - all set to go with Hagrid on to the next stop of their shopping trip.
Hagrid said something about going to get Harry a birthday present - a novelty, to be sure (1) - and unceremoniously dumped Harry in front of Olivander's - the wand-maker, apparently, although Harry had only the sign in the front to go by. According to it, Mr. Olivander's family has been in the wand crafting - and retailing - business for several millennia, well before people started counting the years strait. They used to count them backwards, for some reason, Harry remembered from school. They were generally backwards at that time, now that Harry thought about it.
Little did he know, he was entering the Wizarding World now. Backwards didn't even begin to describe it.
Harry was thinking about how the sign said the Olivanders have been crafting wands for thousands of years. That was odd. Harry read some children stories about Merlin - God forbid the Dursleys knew that he did, but he used to take shelter - and relief - from Dudley and his Gang in the school's library. The librarian, the old miser, kept an eye on the little trouble maker and didn't put up with any shenanigans in his library. There were other things he didn't put up with either - like running, speaking loudly, being illiterate, sticky fingers… all of Dudley's less endearing traits - not that there were more endearing traits, to tell the truth, other than to his parents - traits mostly shared by his little gang of friends. As such, the library was Terra Incognita for Dudley, uncharted land, forbidden land, one to watch from afar but never enter (2). Which suited Harry just fine. And so he read the children book stocked in his school's library - God knows few enough kids bothered with them any longer - and he read about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the great wizard Merlin and the evil witch Morgan la Fey. And then there was the wizard Prospero, and the three witches from Macbeth. No, before you ask, Harry didn't read Shakespeare, not yet, at least. He did read Charles and Mary Lamb, however.
One thing all those stories agreed about. Wizards used staves. Witches… well, witches didn't. They had broomsticks, though.
Some stories did come to Harry's mind, though, that had magic wands in them - but those were mostly translations of Germanic, Frankish and Dutch folk stories, the kind the Grimm brothers used to collect and edit the Mickey out of - not that Harry knew anything about it, of course. Those stories, too, were clear on one point. Magical wands were carried by… fairy godmothers.
Harry never had a godmother. He didn't have a godfather either - not one that he knew about, at any rate, but if his parents were magical, it could be expected that he had a fairy godmother with a pink or yellow little wand with a star at the end that could grant three wishes and protect small little boys in their cribs.
Oh, how Harry has wished at times he had such a godmother that would wave her wand and make everything right and carry him away…
She never came.
And so Harry spent his childhood in the care of the two Dursleys, if you could call it that, and was deprived from the pop-culture most children his age were fed with a spoon.
He never got to watch Sesame-Street, so he never heard of The Amazing Mumford the Magician. And of course the Dursleys never even considered taking him to a magic show, where stage magicians, all in their pristine black tie waved their wands over their upturned bowler hats and drew up little white bunny rabbits or turned perfectly good handkerchiefs into doves.(3) So Harry never saw a magic wand at work, (4) and definitely never imagined wizards used them. Well, there was a first for everything, Harry thought, and stepped in.
(1) Harry actually did get a present once - even if it was for Christmas, not his birthday - but it was less the case of getting it than getting rid OF it.
(2) Although comparing himself to Moses, the father of prophets, was beyond Dudley. He never read about him. Which is a good thing! Moses, after all, had a magic staff of his own. Better never to have mentioned one of these anywhere near No. 4, Privet Drive, for poor Harry's sake.
(3) Petunia never would have approved of it anyway. Taking a clean, white handkerchief and turning it into flee-ridden chicken! Who heard of such a waste! She could use the handkerchief to clean little Diddikins's wet nose at winter, yes she could… then give it to the Freak to get rid of it. Like she did with Vernon smelliest socks. Then again, he might turn it into a dove himself, better not give him ideas. And Dudly's snot might catch germs. And do you know any good recipes for cooking doves? I hear it's a big thing in the Colonies, they already hunted the Passenger Pigeon to extinction, the barbarians, and doves are so much more aesthetically pleasing, don't you think, Vernon?
(4) Harry did see Hagrid use his wand on Dudley, or at least what was left of it, but it was cleverly - as cleverly as Hagrid was capable of, at least - disguised as an umbrella. Harry, of course, never saw Mary Poppins either, or he'd have wondered why they had to take the boat…